Lenore Skomal: Good cause draws caustic response

Lenore Skomal

March 7, 2013 12:01 AM

Lenore Skomal

March 7, 2013 12:01 AM

'Oh, so you're a cause person."

The derision in her voice palpable, she added a visual to her snide comment and sneered at me as she flipped the clipboard back on the table. Bewildered, I couldn't help but be taken aback by her snarky tone. I didn't view myself as a stereotype.

Just this side of 22, I stood at the feeble folding table on the cold, cheap linoleum floor of the busy train station, asking passers-by to sign a petition encouraging lawmakers to add some real teeth to existing child pornography laws. Not my idea of a good time on an early January morning before work -- but necessary in my mind.

Clearly this woman made an assumption about me and manipulated the phrase "cause person" to sound not just bad, but cheap. Though confused back then, I have since learned a thing or two about judgmental people. Scratch the surface hard, and you always find raw insecurity.

After all, she'd wrapped herself in a silky full-length fur coat, courtesy of the generous, selfless donation of 55 or so unsuspecting minks. Regardless of my feelings at the time about fur, would that have given me the right to assume she personally mass murdered innocent critters to make herself an article of clothing, or that she was a mink hater? No, that would have been ridiculous.

I suspect she believed the petition in my hand was just the tip of the iceberg. Heck, I might've had another clipboard with a PETA petition stuffed inside my down parka or been packing a bottle of bleach to squirt all over her pricey coat. You know us cause people.

Well, that was a long, long time ago. Despite my efforts to stand up for a cause, tragic to say, children continue to be exploited and in much larger numbers than then. The difference is that I no longer stand in chilly train stations to back up my personal beliefs.

But I admire those who do, including my son. Passionate and opinionated, he can afford to be. He's still in college, and that's what you're supposed to do. So when he overslept and missed the bus to Washington for a recent protest, he was depressed because his voice wasn't part of the collective whole. And that meant something to him.

I consoled him, saying there would be more opportunities, because the one certainty in life is injustice, and it exists for a variety of reasons, the least of which is to keep us cause people busy.